[1498] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: What We May All Have Missed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Will Hafer)
Wed Oct 8 20:35:55 2003
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 20:13:15 -0400
From: Will Hafer <williamh@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <KHEOLPFBOLHMGOODAKKJOEIPDCAA.jbelcher@ceci.mit.edu>
Professor Belcher's discussion of race relations in past decades is
certainly moving, and there is a lot to say about these generational
differences. But it's more important to me at this point to try to clarify
a point that has been hinted at a couple of times about official
administrative action in this issue. I believe that, ideally, there should
be no formal discipline. People talk about how the community at MIT is
exceptional. The way to be exceptional now is to handle this issue at the
community level, rather than the Institute level. It is easy to hand out
punishment every time someone says something extremely rude, but no one
wants to be at a college where that is the norm. The MIT community should
be exceptional by reacting in a way that affirms both cultural respect and
academic intolerance of censorship.
This means reaction by individuals. I will venture to say that if the
writers of that email lose just one friend as a result, even temporarily,
it will engender more regret than any likely administrative punishment.
Will
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